Nano protocol passes security audity while another altcoin project on the verge of bankruptcy

Charles Hoskinson, the CEO of IOHK (entity currently in
charge of Cardano development), recently held another surprise AMA on his
official YouTube channel.

During the AMA, first Charles addressed the IOHK Summit
events which were previously an employee-only ordeals; from the year of 2019,
the Summit will be open to the public. The
public portion of the IOHK summit will have presentations on the research and
ideas of Cardano as well as other announcements.

He updated the community on the research side of the
project, claiming that more papers are nearing their publishing dates.
Additionally, the ream is hiring cryptographic engineers in an effort to look
into more exotic and next generation protocols such as SGX and NPC. After this
intro, Charles addressed several community questions:

Does hosting a stake pool make you a slot
leader? What are the differences and responsibilities?

Will we have a side chain for security tokens?

Some political activists I follow online have
been banned from PayPal and even had banks refuse to allow them to open an
account. Can crypto somehow become a solution to help these people?

When shorter addresses?

Will staking be possible on a mobile version of
Yoroi

Can you talk about ADA and ETC and some of the
plans you have with the interaction between the two?

How easy will it be for projects on Ethereum to
switch over to ADA,

and several more. You can check out the complete list of time
stamped questions here,
with the full AMA being available here.

Brave
releases an update regarding its criticized Rewards program

Popular Brave browser has a Rewards program which allows its
users to fund content creators on the internet. This program was recently
criticized by the community for not being very transparent and for basically
collecting donations in the name of various creators who weren’t even aware
that this practice was taking place. This can be an issue and can be considered
as donation fraud,

Brendan Eich, the CEO of Brave, immediately reacted to a Twitter post by one of these creators who pointed out that there are a couple of problems
with the way Brave conducts its donation collecting practice. Him and his team
got down to work and released a hotfix just a couple of days after the
controversy was brought to light.

The hotfix was released on December 22nd and will
from now on have the Brave Rewards program indicating which publishers and
creators haven’t yet officially joined the program. This should help the end
users donate their BAT tokens to people who actually want to take a part in the
donation economy set up by Brave. At the same time, unverified creations won’t
have their YouTube/Twitch channel images appear within Brave Rewards.

Furthermore, Brave confirmed that they intend to implement
even more fixes in the near future.

“We plan to implement
the following features to make Brave Rewards even more straightforward and
appealing to its users:

In the near term, an
opt-out option for creators who do not wish to receive donations. We are also
considering switching the default so users cannot tip or donate to unverified
creators. A change so that users may contribute only UGP-granted tokens to
unverified creators, but can contribute self-funded and grant-funded tokens in
any combination to verified creators.“

Eich himself summed up the update on his Twitter profile:

“The hotfix removes
browser-fetched YouTube profile data shown in the tipping panel for unverified
creators. That’s coming very soon. But we are looking at further changes.”

He also praised the community for providing “important and
frank feedback”, saying that users should be bold and critical with companies
making software, including his own startup. Read the complete update here.

RChain
cooperative “functionally bankrupt”

RChain was once envisioned as a revolutionary project in the
mold of EOS or Tezos, one that would implement a fully functional Proof of
Stake algorithm that would challenge the throne of Ethereum as the market’s
most valuable smart contract focused platform. However, the project is
currently facing a very bleak financial future, according to a report made by a
popular crypto news platform The
Block.

After raising a total of $31 million during their ICO, the
project went and made some questionable financial decisions, including keeping
incomplete balance sheets and purchasing a million-dollar house. Additionally,
the project spent $23.5 million to buy an audio codec by Immersion Networks for
their RSong app. Investors criticized this purchase heavily, especially
considering the total amount that was collected during the ICO:

“I’m not saying it’s
not a good piece of tech. But it was a crazy amount for what we had. Let’s
say you’re building a house for yourself and it’s $1m. But then you find a nice
piece of furniture and you blow half a million on it. And now you don’t have
enough to finish the house and you’ve completely destroyed the main
project you’re working on,” one investor explained the issue.

RChain said that this piece of technology is revolutionary
and well-worth the purchase, claiming that artists will be “literally clamoring”
to get on the RSong app. However, the app has been live for three months now
and currently has a grand total of three songs on it.

CEO Greg Meredith told The Block that “poor management” by a
third-party advisory and “the sharp decline in the crypto market” were the main
reasons that RChain’s treasury suffered this shocking faith. The community
reveals that the problems go deeper, as the project apparently has a history of
mismanagement and a lack of accountability for their reckless investments.
Meredith also apparently promised to have the community much more involved in
the decision-making process and then went on to spend the money completely on
his own volition. Read the complete deconstruction of RChain’s demise here.

Nano Protocol Passes Rigorous Red4Sec
Security Audit

Popular cryptocurrency payment project Nano recently had its
code audited by Red4Sec, a cyber-security company. The audit was initiated back
in September and it encompassed the Nano network consensus algorithm and node software.

The results came in a couple of days ago and Nano proudly published them on their Medium blog today, confirming that their code is squeaky clean. Red4Sec reported no critical
vulnerabilities were found in the Nano protocol. They did recommend two minor
modifications to the Nano code base, one of which was already included in the
Boulton release; the other one can be expected in future software updates.

“We are pleased to
confirm that after conducting the security audit of the consensus code, no
critical vulnerabilities were detected, proving Nano to be the most secure
cryptocurrency we’ve tested,” said Diego Jurado, co-founder of Red4Sec.

Nano themselves confirmed their intention to keep their code
properly tested and audited:

“We understand
security is an ongoing process, the Nano Foundation will continue to maintain
the high-quality of the Nano software and seek ongoing third-party reviews,” said Nano founder Colin LeMahieu.

CaptainAltcoin's writers and guest post authors may or may not have a vested interest in any of the mentioned projects and businesses. None of the content on CaptainAltcoin is investment advice nor is it a replacement for advice from a certified financial planner.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of CaptainAltcoin.com